Sleep researcher Dr. Rosalind Cartwright writes that, “Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original… it is a continuing act of creation.” This idea resonances for me when I remember that some of the most valuable lessons I have learned in my life came in moments of crisis and trauma. I would not want to repeat any of these events. I would not wish them on anyone else. I don’t want to experience crisis and trauma, I don’t long for it. And yet such moments have come, and they may come again. They are the stuff of being alive. My memory—the way our brains work on images of pain and suffering—enables me to make something of such horrible events, create something more of them than the frightful sadness inherent in the original circumstances. And I am ever-so grateful for this creative capacity, for the resilience that I earn by transmuting the painful into something more.

We have entered the American holiday season, which too often means the American spending season, where we are invited to prove our love and worth in the form of the gadgets and gewgaws assaulting us through our video screens and our material encounters with box stores. Holidays are joyful for many of us, aside from all the material temptations. And holidays are times of trauma, sorrow, and pain for too many of us. Families have not always behaved lovingly and acceptingly. Simply filling basic needs is a struggle, let alone the desire that haunts us at this time of year. All around us, people suffer and people die because of where they come from, who they love, or how they express their identities. The world’s problems seem so insurmountable, and it is all too easy to eat the lotus that enables us to forget.

I believe this is why the practice of gratitude is so important. We all have something to be grateful for, and the closer it is to our human connections, the farther it is from stuff wrapped in paper, the more satisfying it will be. We can be grateful for the kindness shown to us by loved ones and strangers. We can be grateful for our capacity to return kindness to others, friends and family or strangers. We can be grateful for the mystery that is life, a life that gives us pain to transmute into something more—into stories of our ability to creatively persevere, to remain loving and receptive to love, to become more empathetic because our own lives are far from perfectly good, perfectly easy, perfectly happy.

In this season of stuff, may you remember that loving and being loved are the greatest gifts. May you shower the people you love with love. May you remember that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, today and every day.

Looking forward to seeing you soon, even in church!
Blessings and best wishes, Rev. Rita